Many modern materials have important and desirable properties, yet may burn easily and may also give off toxic fumes when burning. Hence, much work is being done to find materials that are resistant to heat and flames, or that are otherwise “fire safe”. The effort, in the market place as well in labs, is to find effective low-level additives to further reduce ignitability, or the heat release rate. Current solutions feature different kinds of coating or insertion of additives to organic and non-organic polymers. However, neither method by itself is adequate.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,638,572 to Horley et al teaches a fire retardant coating that features a film forming polymer, an inorganic fire retardant material such as huntite, hydromagnesite, aluminum trihydroxide or magnesium hydroxide, and a metal stannate or metal hydroxyl stannate. However the composition relies on a simple coating which provides limited fire retardant ability.